I really don't care that Roger Clemens took PEDs. It shouldn't exclude him from Cooperstown eligibility. And I'm glad the Red Sox don't care about that issue with their own Hall of Fame (perhaps the Sox are thinking down the road when they want to induct David Ortiz into their HOF). Cheating was accepted by writers, owners, fans, and players when Clemens pitched. It's hypocritical and unethical for that same cheating to now be judged by the same people who let it go unchecked for years.
Roger Clemens is one of the best Red Sox pitchers of all-time. That's not saying too much. From 1920 to 1997, the Red Sox didn't have many all-time great pitchers. Jim Longborg won the Cy Young in 1966, and until Clemens came along, he was the only Red Sox pitcher to win the award. Luis Tiant had a few great years. Lefty Grove was an all-time great. Other than that, Clemens was the first HOF caliber pitcher the Sox had in decades.
But let's not forget that Clemens was a lot like Josh Beckett before Beckett was out of high school. Roger let himself go. He showed up to Spring Training out of shape. He'd get hurt. He was 10-5 on a 1995 team that won the AL East. He was 10-13 the next year. His years as an Ace seemed behind him. After all, at 34 years old, how could anyone expect him to get better?
Yet he did.
The miracle of PEDs turned Clemens' career around. At 35 he won 21 games with a 2.05 ERA and pitched 264 innings. A year later, at 36, he went 20-6 with a 2.65 ERA and 234.2 innings. He turned 39 and was in the best shape of his life when he won his next Cy Young with the Yankees, winning 20 games and throwing 220.1 innings. He won another Cy Young in Houston at 42, throwing 211.1 innings.
If you look at the dip in his performance and fitness from 1993 to 1996, when he's entering his 30s, and then compare it to his resurgence from 1997 to 2006 when he's in his late 30s and early 40s, it's pretty obvious something dramatic changed about his physical fitness regimen.
Why didn't he make that change in Boston, though? Why did he wait until he was with Toronto to start juicing?
Imagine what the 1998 Red Sox could have done with Pedro Martinez and a roided up Roger Clemens?
I will always hate Roger Clemens because he didn't try here. He got lazy, got sloppy, and he didn't give 100% until he left here.
So he's a Red Sox Hall of Famer, he should be a Baseball Hall of Famer. I don't care that he cheated, I do care that he didn't cheat here. WTF, Roger?
I don't like Barry Bonds. I don't like Roger Clemens. I hate both of them and think the tremendous success they had in the late stages of their career was due to their PED usage. I also think they're both jerks. I enjoy seeing bad things happen to them.
However, they belong in the Hall of Fame. And the BBWAA has no right to act as self appointed avengers, bringing baseball "criminals" like Clemens and Bonds to justice for their sins. The BBWAA has no right. Because the BBWAA were silent partners in the PED era dominated by Bonds and Clemens.
Countless players were shooting up and cycling right under the noses of the BBWAA. Arm muscles grew to the sizes of leg muscles. Players recovered from injury at an inhuman pace. And the writers did next to nothing to investigate the real cause. These miracles were attributed to wondrous advances in sports medicine and training technology. The BBWAA made no effort to investigate the effects of PEDs, and then look for those effects being displayed by players. "You still have to hit the ball," was a common dismissal of the theoretical impact PEDs could have.
And even after baseball admitted it had a PED problem, moral indignation and outrage was selective. Writers and fans in Boston, for instance, were quick to attack New York players who were listed as PED users. Myself included. Those same writers and fans were just as quick to forgive and embrace David Ortiz. And we didn't question Manny Ramirez's production in Boston until he wasn't in Boston anymore.
Then there were the San Francisco "journalists" and fans who vehemently defended Barry Bonds to the bitter end. Bonds was portrayed as a victim of being disliked, a victim of reputation, a victim of envy, even a victim of racism.
Most of us wanted asterisks added to records and achievements. In retrospect the entire era deserves an asterisk, not just a few players. And how come there are no movements to add asterisks to known spitball pitchers, or those who stole signs? Red Sox fans who wanted Bonds' records stigmatized with an asterisk don't request that the same be done to the 2004 World Series, or to series MVP Manny Ramirez.
In hindsight, it would be dumb for a player NOT to take PEDs during that era. There were no consequences. The sports media and BBWAA weren't putting any serious effort into questioning the gargantuan numbers and muscles of the era. The League ignored the issue, the Players Association denied it, the teams paid for it, we the fans LOVED it. The writers also gained financially as the game's popularity boomed because of the homerun explosion.
And now we want to punish a few players for what many/most did? Who are we to judge when we loved the product? Who are the BBWAA to determine the right and wrong of something they went out of their way to avoid discovering? The biggest sports story in decades was happening right in front of them and it took years and a Congressional investigation to unearth it? What right do the BBWAA have to judge an era's morality when they were part of it?
The Baseball Hall of Fame isn't a Hall of Morality. Just look at Ty Cobb, or the violent and overindulgent Babe Ruth, or the racist Tom Yawkey. How many other morally repugnant men have been enshrined? How many cheaters? What about admitted spitballer Gaylord Perry? If the BBWAA wants the Hall to be clean, they should start with the garbage inside before focusing on the garbage outside.
Removing morality from the equation, you can only assess players by comparing them to their peers who played in the same era. You can't, for instance, compare Rogers Hornsby's 301 career homeruns to Craig Biggio's 291 and say that they're comparable. But you can compare Biggio to players who played at the same time. So if we're comparing Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds within the context of the era in which they played, they were still the best. Bonds was the best hitter of the PED era. Clemens was one of the best pitchers. There's no arguing that.
The BBWAA wants to clean something that stained the game of baseball. But the BBWAA themselves are also stained. That entire era is. It's over. It happened. The BBWAA did its part to allow it to happen. It can't be reversed or righted. Certainly not by a bunch of holier-than-thou sportswriters who enjoyed the ride and profited from baseball's return to popularity. All that can be done now is to compare the players who played in that time, choose the best ones, and send them to Cooperstown.
The BBWAA failed to do its job back when Bonds and Clemens were playing. In an illogical response to that, they've assumed even more responsibilities. They've made themselves into judge, jury, and executioner of baseball sinners. And they don't have the right or the capability to fulfill that role. They should just vote for the best players.
Firstly, how stupid is it to have an envelope-opening-ceremony when you know the envelope is empty? That was baseball at its most baseballiness yesterday. Just have a press conference and be done with it.
Now to the meat of the discussion. No player was voted into the Hall of Fame by the pompous BBWAA (Baseball Writers' Association of America). A slugger with 762 HRs, 514 steals, and 7 MVPs received 36.2% of the vote. A pitcher with 354 wins and 7 Cy Youngs received only 38.8% Why? Because of PEDs.
I hate Barry Bonds. And I can't wait to DVR Roger Clemens's funeral so I can watch it again and again, and have a chuckle anytime I want. But these guys were never caught, never convicted, and they were damn good players even before the likely start of their PED cycles. Bonds won the MVP 3 times from 1990 to 1993. Clemens won 3 of his Cy Youngs in Boston.
But no, in this issue full of grey area and complex questions, the BBWAA has taken a simple black and white stance. Suspicion=guilt. Even being surrounded by suspicious players means you're guilty. However the BBWAA isn't looking for justice. They simply want to punish the players who threatened the illusion that baseball is something special, something pure. This is about vengeance.
Documentarian Ken Burns made some remarks that clearly demonstrate the punitive attitudes of those who voted against Bonds and Clemens:
"We know some pitchers extended their playing careers, we know some people hit the ball farther... those motherfuckers should suffer for a while."
Yes, Ken Burns actually said that.
Suffer? Motherfuckers? These sound like the words of someone being interviewed outside a Court House, after some thugs were convicted of murdering his children. I can picture Samuel L. Jackson saying this, not Ken Burns.
He and the BBWAA have no right to mount such high horses. They were all complicit in the steroid era, particularly the BBWAA. The writers, whose job it is to find stories and write about them, somehow missed the biggest story in sports for well over a decade. They followed every movement of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and later Barry Bonds, and yet found nothing suspicious? They did no digging, they didn't look for anything to make Big Mac and Sosa look bad.
And when people did speculate or point out the rapid increase in homeruns, they were dismissed as cynics. And then writers talked about how tightly wound the ball was, and how that was making them fly out of the park at absurd rates. And the reason biceps were bursting was due to modern weight-training techniques and protein shakes. Every theory except for illegal PEDs was used to explain the ridiculous amount of homeruns being hit.
The BBWAA was willfully negligent, and they missed the story. Now, since they couldn't punish these players with words, they're punishing them with votes.
Well it's too late. What's done is done. You let this happen. So did the owners, so did MLB, so did the MLBPA, so did the fans. We all let this happen, and we enjoyed it. And it can't be erased. Just like segregation can't be erased. Or the reserve-clause era before free agency. Or the cocaine-era.
A friend of mine pointed out that the Hall of Fame is primarily a museum of the game's history. The writers want to rewrite the history (which they initially did not write about), and that's just wrong. The BBWAA should vote for people they don't like, vote for sluggers with muscles throbbing with HGH, vote for pitchers who extended their careers. It might hurt the BBWAA to do so, but to quote Ken Burns, those motherfuckers should suffer for a while.
I don't like Sammy Sosa, I hate Barry Bonds, and I will laugh the day Roger Clemens dies. But all three of these PED assisted freaks should be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Because baseball can't pretend that the steroid era didn't exist, nor can it act morally superior to something that it participated in and benefited from.
The Hall of Fame is baseball's last bastion of the illusion that it is, or ever was, a pure game. That's why some are so adamantly against admitting the likes of Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa.
These so-called purists aren't defending the game, or the Hall. They're defending their own delusions. They're in denial. They think that impurity is something new to the game.
The game has always had dirty aspects to it. It was white-only until 1947. Players didn't have basic labor rights until free agency. Cocaine and amphetamines were an everyday part of the sport in the 1970s.
And the Hall of Fame has already been infiltrated by filth. Ty Cobb is in the Hall, despite the fact that he was a bigot, once beat up a crippled man, probably fixed games, and probably killed at least one person. White Sox owner Charles Comiskey is in the Hall of Fame and he was so cheap that he made his players pay to launder their uniforms. Those players eventually threw the 1919 World Series. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey is in the Hall of Fame despite running a racist organization that was offered and declined a chance to sign Negro Leaguer Willie Mays. The Red Sox didn't integrate until 1959, 12 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier.
Baseball cannot move forward from the steroid era until it acknowledges that it occurred and is a part of the game's history. The purists who don't want to see Barry Bonds's HGH swollen head on a bronze plaque are desperate to avoid admitting that their sacred game isn't as chaste and innocent as they proclaim it to be.
And these BBWA purists were the same sportswriters who failed to unearth and expose the wide-scale cheating they are now so vehemently against. These writers saw Barry Bonds's skull grow, they saw Sosa and Mark McGwire's inhuman biceps that were as big as most men's thighs, and all these writers could do was applaud. They buzzed with excitement during the homerun race between Sosa and McGwire. They marveled at the shape Roger Clemens was in despite his age. They theorized about Alex Rodriguez hitting 800 homeruns. They even explained the explosion in offense with juiced balls and smaller ballparks.
Now they're rallying against the same players whose PED aided deeds they filled their sports pages with. These hypocrites shouldn't be the ones who know prevent Bonds, Clemens, and Sosa from being inducted.
So let the freaks in. There are segregationist owners in the Hall so why not PED assisted players?
I know I'm a few days late discussing Josh Beckett's recent back spasms. I'm sorry for that.
What I'm not at all sorry about is how happy I was that he was booed after taking himself out of a game Tuesday night. While I'm sure the injury is legitimate, I have little sympathy for someone with such a low threshold of pain, and absolutely no sympathy for an athlete that doesn't take care of himself.
I can't figure out who Beckett reminds me of more. J.D. Drew, or his boyhood hero Roger Clemens.
Drew had no tolerance for physical discomfort. And neither does Beckett. For Beckett to operate at 100%, it seems like everything needs to be perfect. His back, his blisters, his lats, the wind, the weather, the crowd noise, the pre-game meal, the golf game he played two days earlier. He can't pitch well if just one little thing is off. He's a diva.
The great athletes are able to summon greatness when not in peak physical or mental condition. Michael Jordan with the flu, Pedro Martinez in Game 5 of the '99 ALDS, even Brett Favre the day after his father died.
I'm not asking or expecting Beckett to throw a perfect game with a strained muscle in his back. But it would be nice if he were able to pitch well even when feeling uncomfortable or in pain. Or just try to pitch at all. He seems more willing to leave a baseball game early than cancel a golf game.
He'd rather sit out then push through. Which is very J.D. Drew of him.
At least Drew was in shape, though. Beckett isn't. And this is how he is like his idol, Mr. Roger Clemens. As Clemens' career in Boston progressed, he added some Texas Toast to his body. His waist grew, his ERA grew, his innings decreased. That's very similar to Beckett. Beckett is 32 now, the same age Clemens was in the middle of his plumping and slumping.
I wonder if Ben Cherington will say that Beckett is in the "twilight" of his career. Then Josh will wind up with the Blue Jays, miraculously get in shape, throw 496.2 innings in 2 years, and win a pair of Cy Youngs.
In some ways, Beckett is worse than Clemens. The Red Sox Front Office battled Roger Clemens. Now, the Front Office enables Beckett. This lack of control over Beckett makes him a more dangerous monster.
Beckett is the guy more worried about finding the identity of last year's "snitch" than making the playoffs.
Beckett is the guy who golfed while injured, then instead of explaining that he was approved to do so, quoted how many days off he had and that it was nobody's business how he spent them.
Beckett is the guy leading Jon Lester and Clay Buchholz astray.
And the Front Office refuses to rein him in. They fired Francona and kept Beckett. But Valentine hasn't been a disciplinarian at all and doesn't seem to have support from the Front Office to be one. Most recently, the Sox allegedly had a chance to get rid of Beckett and send him back to Texas. They chose to keep him.
The Red Sox actually seem afraid to drop Beckett. Getting rid of him would be the same as waving a white flag for the 2012 season. That's true, but it would also give the green flag for the Sox to win in 2013 and beyond. Cherington didn't have the power to pull the trigger. Lucchino doesn't have the stones to sacrifice this mediocre season and look to win in 2013. And John Henry is probably looking to buy an Aussie Rules Football team.
Beckett is a perfect storm of jackassery. He doesn't stay in shape, he's a detriment to team morale, he's a bad influence on younger players, and he's soft (literally and figuratively).
If Roger Clemens, J.D. Drew, and a used douchebag could have a child, they would name it Josh Beckett.
The U.S. Judicial System does not determine innocence. It determines guilt, or insufficient proof of guilt. That's why when people are acquitted, they're declared "not guilty" instead of "innocent." The court is essentially saying that it hasn't found you guilty, so you're free to go.
It does NOT declare people to be innocent, at least not until you get into the Appeals process.
Proving innocence is difficult because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative. Think how hard it would be to prove that you've never done something.
I've never eaten rhubarb. But proving that is difficult because it's a negative statement. I'd have to get witnesses from every meal I've ever consumed to say they've never seen me eat it, samples of my bowel movements to show it's never been in my system, and then I'd have to prove somehow that I never snacked on it by myself.
So when people say that Roger Clemens has been "proven innocent," then back that argument up by pointing out how high an authority the U.S. Judicial System is, I get a little pissed. Because it's the wrong word.
The court did not declare Clemens innocent. Being deemed "not guilty" is not proof of innocence. The prosecution failed to prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. There is a difference.
I think Clemens took PEDs. Jose Canseco says Clemens demonstrated an intricate knowledge of PEDs. Brian McNamee said he gave PEDs to Clemens. And Andy Pettitte testified that Clemens admitted to him that he took HGH.
Pettitte retracted his statements, but I don't think it's mere coincidence that he did so once the heat was off him. Andy Pettitte has repeatedly lied about his own HGH use, at first claiming only 2-4 doses and only during 2002, then later admitted to doing some in 2004.
When Pettitte was under pressure, he named Clemens. When the pressure eased off and Pettitte was no longer afraid of consequences, he recanted his Clemens story.
The story was Clemens told Pettitte about taking HGH. Clemens claimed that he told Pettitte about his wife taking HGH. But earlier in Clemens' testimony, Clemens claims his wife never took HGH. So, which is it?
Maybe Pettitte, under pressure to save his own skin, was compelled to name names, even if those people were innocent. But then why name one of his best friends?
In the end, it doesn't matter much. There is no absolute proof that Clemens' career was artificially extended by PEDs. That lack of proof was why he was acquitted.
But I know what my gut tells me. I see more than just smoke. I see scorched earth, burnt wood, an ashy haze, and a number of people saying "there was a fire here."
Clemens might get into the Hall of Fame. And I don't care. The Hall of Fame is already full of scumbags. Ty Cobb was a racist who probably killed a guy. Charles Comiskey was a cheap, money-grubbing bastard. Joe DiMaggio was a jerk. Babe Ruth was a glutton, an alcoholic, and a horrible father. What damage could be done by including Clemens?
I don't know why we get so emotional about who is in the baseball Hall of Fame and who isn't. Maybe it's because when we're kids, we learn about the great players. And the words "Hall of Famer" are the athletic equivalent of "Saint."
So put Clemens in the Hall. Give him a brass face on a plaque with some numbers and words on it. I know those final 4 Cy Youngs are meaningless. I know his final 150 wins were thanks to HGH. I know he's scum, he's a sociopath, he's not the best pitcher of his generation or any other generation. He's artificial.
But if you're going to put him in, don't say it's because he's been "proven innocent." I heard Peter Gammons say that on NESN yesterday and it's a complete misunderstanding of how our system works.
Roger Clemens hasn't been proven to be anything. So maybe voters should give him the benefit of the doubt and vote him in. As I said, I don't care.
And as much as these clowns repeat the wrong word, I for one know that he isn't innocent. I see no proof of innocence. Only a haze of guilt. You can't convict someone on a haze, but there is no way he's been "proven innocent."
Roger Clemens was found not guilty in his perjury trial. And I don't care. I didn't need or want the Federal Government to punish Clemens. I didn't need or want the Government involved involved in the steroid issue at all. Although it did give Congress less time to screw up the country.
It would have been hilarious for Roger Clemens to go to jail. He did lie to Congress when he denied using PEDs. And that's inexcusable. As much as I disagree with Congress poking their noses into sports, that doesn't give Clemens the right to lie to them.
Clemens is a scumbag. And a fraud. That's his punishment for taking PEDs, and it's well deserved.
His rebirth in Toronto was due to his violating the rules. All the adulation, all the ESPN ball-washing he got from 1997 to 2007 was ill-gotten. He's paying for that now as his reputation is tarnished, his Cy Youngs are tainted, and his Hall of Fame credentials are questionable.
Clemens was great in the late 80's and early 90's. He won three Cy Young Awards with the Sox. He also won an MVP. But he started to slide, both on the mound and in terms of his physical shape. In 1993 he was 11-14 with a 4.46 ERA. In strike-shortened 1994, he was 9-7. He was 10-5 in '95, then 10-13 in '96. The Rocket seemed out of gas. Or maybe it was too heavy to take off.
Dan Duquette famously said Clemens was in "the twilight of his career."
He signed with the Blue Jays in 1996. He seemed motivated to make Duquette eat his words. We all thought that Clemens' much improved physical shape was a result of this motivation. Little did we know.
Clemens won the Cy Young twice in Toronto. He was traded to the Yankees. He won the World Series there in '99 and 2000. Then he won another Cy Young in 2001. He was 38 years old, and was in much better shape than he was at 28. We all thought it was due to his extreme training regimen.
He had another career rebirth in Houston. He won his 7th Cy Young with the Astros. He was 41. He pitched until he was 44.
Steroids and PEDs do more than just help players build raw muscle-mass. They help the body recover from injury. Which allows an athlete to train harder and spend less time recovering.
In some ways, steroids can help a pitcher more than a hitter. Throwing 100 pitches is a form of injury. And it typically takes 4 days to recover from it. A pitcher on steroids will be able to recover more quickly and more strongly than normal. Especially an older pitcher.
Steroids make exercise easy. I once had to take them for my eyes, and found myself on an exercise bike for 90 minutes at a time, close to 20 miles. And I wouldn't even feel tired. I'd have to tell myself to stop. It was a breeze.
I can't even imagine the effect of steroids and PEDs specifically designed to enhance athletic training.
It's probably a good thing Clemens didn't wind up in jail over this. As much as I dislike the bastard, I never wanted him in prison for cheating, even for lying about cheating. Maybe for having an affair with a 15 year old country music singer, but not for this.
